Listening to Evert constantly needle Pam about her third-banana status throughout her career is a master class in negging. She's the closest thing the tennis world has to a sitcom character. She's also easily the most fun, a benign kook who calls a tennis match like your unfiltered aunt. That status has persisted on ESPN, with Shriver the consummate B-team commentator. Shriver peaked at #3 in the world in singles and was one of the great doubles players of her era, but she came to prominence in the era of Evert and Martina Navratilova, so she was doomed to forever exist in their considerable shadow. If the world of tennis commentary were The Gilded Age, Chrissie Evert would be the demanding Christine Baranski, while Pam Shriver would be the disrespected, scattershot Cynthia Nixon. But that attitude has earned her the ire of a generation of younger tennis fans who haven't appreciated her sometimes critical (or worse yet, to some, insufficiently enthusiastic) commentary when it comes to certain players, Serena Williams in particular. Her exacting standards from the booth are a splash of cold water amid some of the more cheerleader-y commentary you get elsewhere, and Evert is one of the few players whose record can back up her words. Evert's status within the pantheon of American women's tennis has cast her in a complicated light for fans. Chrissie EvertĮSPN's other legend-in-residence is Chrissie Evert, the 18-time Grand Slam champion and recent cancer survivor who serves as lead color commentator for the women's matches. That tenure was a rocky one, though, and it tends to crop up on the broadcast every now and then, like when American Taylor Townsend side-eyed McEnroe in an on-court interview, alluding to the time when he denied her a wild-card entry into the U.S. Patrick carved out more of an identity for himself in the tennis world when he ran player development for the USTA from 2008 through 2014. The Frank Stallone to his brother John's Sylvester - or the Haylie Duff to John's Hilary, if you want a slightly more contemporary reference - Patrick McEnroe is doomed to forever sit in his brother's shadow, especially now that ESPN has put both them together for their main commentary team. But he's a tennis legend and nine times out of ten, he's the most famous person in the stadium, including the players on the court, so we all have to put up with him.

This kind of thing is especially irksome when ESPN puts him in the booth for women's matches. And he's prone to starting weird beefs, like the time he said Serena Williams wouldn't be in the top 700 on the men's tour. He either can't or won't pronounce certain players' names correctly (top 5 Greek player Stefanos Tsitsipas has been 'Sissypas' for McEnroe for years). He'll fully ignore the match he's calling to talk about top-ranked players like Novak Djokovic instead.

The enfant terrible reputation McEnroe cultivated as a player has morphed into a cranky dad persona in the booth. Tennis legend McEnroe has been the big dog when it comes to color commentating on men's tennis since the late '90s and has been with ESPN specifically since 2009. Here's a quick guide to the major personalities. The product on the court is sure to be thrilling, but the personalities in the ESPN booth are a show all their own. Hardcore tennis fans are familiar with these personalities and get a whole other level of enjoyment out of watching the matches as they call out the commentators' well-known biases, groan at the Brad Gilbert nicknames, and giggle as Pam Shriver's antics drive everyone else to distraction. That holds true for both the active players on the tour as well as those in the press booth. when compared to the likes of pro-football or pro-basketball, it is a niche that is rife with fascinating personalities, grudges, conflicts of interest, and figures who are revered and others who elicit eye-rolls. While professional tennis remains a comparatively niche sport in the U.S. Open tennis championships kicks off on August 28, marking the cable network’s ninth year as the exclusive TV home of the Open.

Terrible diving commentator